New survey finds nearly all Germans have heard of famous whistleblower.

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New worldwide survey results conducted by a Canadian think tank show that most people around the world (60 percent) have heard of Edward Snowden, but just over a third "have taken steps to protect their online privacy and security as a result of his revelations."

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The study, which was released Monday by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), surveyed more than 23,000 people in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey, and the United States. The survey did not break out respondents by nationality.

The figures varied widely: 94 percent of Germans surveyed heard of the National Security Agency whistleblower, while only 76 percent of Americans had. Kenya rounded out the bottom of the list at 14 percent. Globally, this resulted in an average of 60 percent.

Have the 14,000 people familiar with Snowden done anything with this knowledge? Some people have tried to learn more about encryption and other ways to improve security online. India led the pack in this area with 69 percent, followed by Mexico and China. Amongst Americans, only 36 percent of people took steps to protect privacy. The worldwide mean came in at 39 percent.

Traditionally privacy-minded Germans were generally skeptical of data security online; only 15 percent of them "strongly agree" or "somewhat agree" that "private information on the Internet is very secure." Similarly, just 13 percent of Germans surveyed agreed that they "would trust the United States to play an important role in running the Internet."

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Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is out now from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar